Opaque Internet Censorship: Turkey, Russia, and Britain

On Tuesday, Turkey instituted a voluntary filtering system blocks "objectionable content" when enabled. Users will now have to sign up for the free system with their ISP and select from two levels of filtering: child and family. The original intention for this tiered system was for it be mandatory, but authorities backtracked after widespread protests against the scheme.

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Just as in Turkey, the UK's Internet filtering system is overseen by a dubious secretive organization known as the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). One of the organization's responsibilities include managing the UK's block list of child sexual abuse sites and images. All of Britain's ISPs subscribe to this list.

In 2008, the IWF famously blocked the Wikipedia page of German band Scorpions because it contained the controversial cover image of the band's 1976 album Virgin Killer; the ban--later reversed--resulted in the inability of British Wikipedians to edit pages.

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According to a report from Global Voices, censorship is taking various forms on Russian web fora in the run-up to parliamentary elections. Popular site Kostroma Jedis Forum (jedi.net.ru) had its server confiscated by police on November 16 on the grounds of a libel investigation, while two sites--Miass city forum and Chusovskoy Rabochiy--removed all comments, the former shutting down until election day. A fourth site, mcn.nnov.ru, declared itself a "politics-free zone."